In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, we, the inventors, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. We also grow a smaller number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits, usually to capture recessive traits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of cherry tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘Glencrest’.
During a typical blooming season we isolate as seed parents individual cherry trees by covering them with screen houses. A hive of bees is placed inside each such house, and bouquets to provide pollen from different cherry trees are placed in buckets near the trees approximately every two days for the duration of the bloom. During 2002 one such house containing ‘Glenred’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 12,859) cherry tree was crossed by us in this manner. To pollinate this cherry, we selected bouquets from several sources of cherry trees without keeping specific written details. Upon reaching maturity the fruit from this cherry tree was harvested and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label ‘Glenred House’. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in our greenhouse, and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of our experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the summer of 2008 the claimed variety was selected by us as a single tree from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of cherry tree, we asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproductions were true to the original tree in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Colt’ (unpatented) rootstock, upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is most similar to its seed parent, ‘Glenred’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 12,859) cherry, by being self-unfruitful, by having reniform glands, by being productive, and by producing fruit that is dark red in skin color, red in flesh color, oblate in shape, firm, sweet, and fairly crack resistant, but is distinguished therefrom by blooming about four days later, by possessing different s-alleles to make it useful as a cross pollinator, and by producing cherries that are somewhat smaller in size, that ripen about two days later, that are more heat tolerant, and that have a shorter stem that is more firmly attached to the fruit.
The present variety is also similar to ‘Glenrock’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 15,512) cherry, by being self-unfruitful, by having reniform glands, by blooming in mid March, by being productive, and by producing fruit that is dark red in skin color, partially red in flesh color, oblate in shape, firm, sweet, fairly freestone, and fairly crack resistant, but is distinguished therefrom by producing cherries that have a shorter stem and that ripen about ten day earlier.